Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a popular technique for dealing with issues such as depression or anxiety, which can be big triggers for porn use. This is an online course in CBT that can be useful for recognising and handling those triggers.
Here’s one man’s example of how CBT can help with porn recovery:
CBT has helped me though many troubles in life, depression, anxiety. It’s good for any loaded emotional situation.
It’s a system to allow one to take a good mindful look at his or her own emotions and underlying thoughts. Then to be completely honest and ask yourself a series of questions about these thoughts. Through this questioning, such as, “what is the evidence that supports this thought? and does not support this thought?” and “If your friend was in this situation what would you tell them?” what usually ends up happening is you discover that you have no evidence that supports your thoughts, and A LOT of evidence to the contrary of your thoughts.
Then at the end you write alternate responses to your thought(s). For me it takes about an hour to do one. But with training you can do them in your head, in the moment when in public, in a more simplistic way.
So here is mine:
My original thoughts I recorded were “You will never experience happiness again in your whole life without porn.” 90% (The percentage is how much you believe in it.) and “You can’t remove this from your life, what else do you have out there [to make you happy]?” 80%
You also record your emotional level: Anger 70%, frustration 80%, longing 99%, sadness 90%, loss 89%.
After this is the questioning:
– Evidence that supports this? “It’s only been 18 days, and they have been very tough, but this is only the withdrawal.”
– Evidence that does not support this? “You’ve been having amazing success w/ life since quitting. Many doors have been opening, old emotions enlivening again. A whole slew of positive changes occurring including — more energy, enjoying life more, more confidence — and on and on.”
(about 20 questions later)
Alternative thought(s):
“You can be happy without porn, it is possible.” 90%
And then re-assess the levels of the first step and compare to show we have in fact made progress.
Anger 0% (was 70%), frustration 0% (80%), longing 15% (99%), sadness 5% (90%), loss 0% (89%).
“You will never experience happiness again in your whole life without porn.” 10% (90%)
“You can’t remove this from your life, what else do you have out there [to make you happy]?” 0% (80%)
;